"There are 463 asylum seekers in immigration detention waiting for ASIO to complete security checks and more than 50 people with negative ASIO assessments that have condemned them to indefinite detention." Photo: Angela Wylie
THE federal government has come under renewed judicial attack over the way it treats unaccompanied teenage asylum seekers.
A 17-year-old boy, who was hospitalised in Darwin after trying to hang himself from a double bunk bed, is at the centre of a challenge in the Federal Court to the prolonged detention of recognised refugees waiting for ASIO security clearance.
The High Court has meanwhile ruled that the Immigration Department was wrong to refuse to let an Afghan teenager, who arrived unaccompanied as a child in Australia, later bring his mother here.
And, in the Federal Court, law firm Slater & Gordon has sought the release of a Kuwaiti teenager into community detention and questioned the Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's duty of care to unaccompanied children left to deteriorate into mental illness.
There are 463 asylum seekers in immigration detention waiting for ASIO to complete security checks and more than 50 people with negative ASIO assessments that have condemned them to indefinite detention.
Lawyers for the boy, who has been detained for more than a year despite being granted refugee status in April, cannot be told whether ASIO has issued a negative security clearance uor are still investigating his case.smh.com.au
